Sunday, October 18

9 days to go

All I wanted to do Sunday morning was stay home, nurse my wine headache, and read the funnies to Sorrow, who lay on his back beside me on the bed, all four feet stuck up in the air.

When I’d gotten home the night before there’d been a call from Jackson, very apologetic about Bill’s party and telling me that Regina had explained to him how it was intrusive of him to ask to call an agent who was considering my work. At that point he gave a nervous laugh. “She also said I should never have invited her to the party without checking with Bill. She said I am a rude person but, of course, she doesn’t know me very well, yet.” There was a pause. “She reminds me of you, Emily. I rather like that particular kind of feistiness. Perhaps I’ve been missing it in my life. Would you say you were the rudder I needed to keep me on a straight course?” He made a thinking, kind of clucking, sound. “Wouldn’t that be something? I mean, if now I learn that what we had together was what I needed all along?”

My stomach was too tender for that much sugared pap so early in the day. I would not call him back. I would not call Dolly either. Let her call me. I was going to make a list of everything I’d learned about Marjory Otis so far and another list of what we still needed to know. I sat with my first cup of tea of the day—making it a chai, which warmed my soul. I started my lists. When I’d finished I found I knew a lot about the woman, and just as much I didn’t know:

Who had she come to Leetsville to help?

How was the Reverend Fritch involved?

Who had she taken out to Deward with her?

What did Arnold know about their mother?

Where was the other brother—Paul?

And the biggest questions of all: What was Marjory doing at Deward to begin with? What would make her go there, to a place she’d said she feared? And why did she fear it?

I made a list of people I needed to talk to, beginning with the Reverend Fritch, Arnold Otis, and Aunt Cecily. Most of all I had to sit down with Dolly and find out what was going on. Maybe I even needed to talk to Lucky, see what he was picking up from her. And, God help me, that Officer Winston from the Gaylord state police office, I had to get in touch with him. He was expecting results from me and Dolly. I didn’t know how he would feel about a reporter doing what a police officer should have been doing.

Bill called a little after nine to see if I wanted him to go with me to the next of the ghost towns on my list. I had this tug at my conscience. What I really wanted to do was go out to a ghost town with Bill, walk in the woods, enjoy what was promising to be a fine fall day, and get really happy. I wanted to be free of my obligation to a group of women I barely knew, going with them to a place where I’d been uncomfortable, and talking to people I thought were truly nuts.

“Can’t, Bill,” I said, letting my voice show the deep disappointment I felt. “I promised to go out to see the Reverend Fritch. It’s about Marjory Otis’ murder.”

He hung up reluctantly. Probably didn’t trust me not to turn up a dead body every story I went out on. I could see that, after a while, an editor might get suspicious. And—after a while—a thing like that might make any reporter nervous.

Sorrow and I took a long walk to clear our heads and check out the chipmunk population. I wanted to go up to Willow Lake Road and over to Harry’s to see how the courtship was going, but I didn’t like to take Sorrow there with me. Harry’s dogs went crazy at the sight of another animal. Anyway, with Harry, I never knew where the fine line between busybodyness and concern lay. He could get testy if I asked too many questions. What I would have to do was wait until he came to me, maybe with his new bride on his arm. Or mad as hell, and swearing off women for the rest of his life.

At my studio, I tried to work on the new book, Dead something or other, but it grew elusive, wouldn’t fall into a nice straight line I could follow from beginning to end. I figured I’d just name all my books starting with Dead. That way they’d be in a straight line—if they ever got published—in bookstores and libraries.

There was something there—to this new story I was writing. Dolly and I had lived it but I couldn’t get it to sit still on the computer. A young Indian woman kept jumping in and out of my vision. Lovely. Young. But scarred. I brought her forward in my head but she didn’t want to be trapped in words. Not yet. I would have to coax her, work with her, let her get to know me before I asked that she put her life in my hands. I made a few notes—on my part and on Dolly’s part in the story. Nothing more happened. I sat staring at the screen, let my finger rest on J, and watched a funny line of dancing j’s run across the screen. Time to get out of there.

I walked around Willow Lake, tip-toeing through wet places where the tag-alder and lake met. At one of the beaver’s slides, Sorrow ran in circles, nose to the ground, sniffing the six-inch lengths of wood the beaver had readied for transport down to his den where he would live off the cellulose all winter. The beaver, swimming around his conical house, wasn’t happy when he caught us at his slide. He paddled back and forth, slapping his tail on the water, trying to get a big enough wave going to scare us away. Sorrow watched him, trying to decide if it was worth the swim out to visit or not. Being the smartest dog on earth, Sorrow said the heck with a cold swim and the chillier welcome, and came bounding back to me. We moved on, making a bouquet of perfect red and gold and multi-colored leaves to take home with us, to put in my garage sale crystal vase and set where the sun would hit them, in front of the big front windows.

That was the good part of the day.

I stopped at the Green Trees Motel just after noon, figuring we didn’t need to take two cars out to the campsite. The women were ready, chattering among themselves, and coming up with questions to ask the reverend. All three were deeply into discovering what had happened to Marjory in that terrible place she had been afraid to go.

As we drove back through Leetsville, Crystalline wondered if she could see any of the photographs the police took of Marjory, there at Deward. Dead under the tree.

“Not that I want to see her … like that.” She made a face. “I mean, I can imagine how awful it was …”

I shook my head. “Not awful at all. She looked as if she was asleep. That’s what I thought …”

“What we were talking about was that maybe, by how she was sitting or something around her, we could figure out what happened.” Felicia leaned over the seat to join the conversation.

“I pick up things by holding a picture in my hand,” Sonia, her voice whispery for a change, offered from the other side of the back seat.

“I took photographs,” I said, only then remembering. “I’ll put them on my computer when I get home tonight and run off the best for you.”

“Could you run off all of what you have?” Crystalline asked, turning tear-filled eyes my way. “If there’s any chance … We want to help.”

I agreed, kicking myself for not remembering I had my own photos of the scene. If Dolly had been doing her job and realized what I’d done she would have asked for them before now or shown Crystalline the photos she’d taken. It was her fault I wasn’t doing the best work I could be doing. This was her department, damn it. I was only supposed to write the stories, not be at their center. I should have been Boswell to Dr. Johnson. Dr. Watson to Sherlock Holmes. Not this damned girl detective without a clue to her name.

By the time we pulled into the two-track leading to the campsite and the End Timers, I was fuming at Dolly all over again and deciding she could take over her own investigation or give it back to Gaylord. Officer Winston seemed like the kind of guy who would be glad to get us out of the way and hog glory to himself.

Well … not glory so much as aggravation and fear and feeling stupid and abandoned.

Damn Dolly. After this visit to the Reverend Fritch, I was going to hunt her down, make her tell me what was going on, or give her a knock on the head to bring her back to her senses.

Then I would wish her a happy birthday.